My group is mostly ranged, so it isn't an issue that comes up often.

Though when we do decide to dapple in vibro-weapons, lightsabers and the such I want to know what to expect.

After reading the rules if we were to use the standard difficulty for say a lightsaber duel, it seems it runs into the problem of WEG were whoever basically gets to strike first wins the day. Since skill or defense doesn't factor into a melee standard difficulty. (At least on the defender side.)

And with a lightsaber being so dangerous...

Yet I want to know about people that have melee heavy games or run it a bit to see their experience. Like the standard difficulty for melee? Did you house rule it? Does you run into any problems? Or is it actually great and better then opposed?

I use a number of diffiulty dice equal to the agility of the target for melee attacks. Works pretty well.

Defenses appear to come from specific Talents, not just from abilities or skills. Low XP characters don't have such defenses, but they should be a goal for combat-heavy PCs.

I thought for a while that the melee two purple system made a seasoned fighter as easy to hit as an old lady... But the defence ability comes from talents such as dodge etc.

Yeah, the core difficulty is smart because talents and gear make up for the rest. Not to mention spending Destiny, and maneuvering for a better position. The Leadership talents seem like a great way to shake things up too on the maneuvering front.

I see a lot of potential in the combat system as is, so I am playing it RAW for at least the first campaign or two. Gotta see how things shake up at higher XP levels.

I thought for a while that the melee two purple system made a seasoned fighter as easy to hit as an old lady... But the defence ability comes from talents such as dodge etc.

Exactly.

A skilled fighter is going to have things like Dodge and Defensive Stance to make it harder to get hit in melee. There's also the Guarded Stance maneuver, and for a skilled melee fighter, a lone setback dice on their attack rolls isn't much of a hindrance. Heck, I've seen a Wookiee PC with Brawn 4 and Brawl 2 for whom that setback die didn't even rate a speed bump.

As for the OP's remark about lightsabers being dangerous... yeah, they are. Although unlike the WEG and OCR/RCR games, a lightsaber in EotE is deadly no matter who uses it, rather than being a half-way decent weapon unless you're one of the lucky few with Force powers (WEG being especially bad in that regard since one power let you boost both attack and damage rolls with a lightsaber plus parry blaster fire).

EotE truly captures how dangerous these weapons are supposed to be, while also making them very difficult to come by for most PCs. At a 10K base price and Rarity 10, you'd have an easier time buying a couple ships for that price.

My friend's wookiee PC last night made the mistake of taking on Teemo the Hutt in hand to hand combat last night after Teemo had already drawn his blaster, the Hutt then called for an honour fight and the wookiee graciously handed Teemo a vibrio-axe, he was most surprised when Temmo turned out to be quite good with it. The two difficulty dice is just difficult enough to make the fight interesting but quite brutal.

The best bit about last night was watching the players face as he gradually found out some of the Hutts stats, he did think it was going to be a one hit fight, boy was he surprised.

When characters get over 10 soak, they are hard to stop and can easily melee people with blaster pistols or worse with no fear at all.

A heavy blaster pistol would need 3 successes to hurt a player with over 10 soak.

I saw an alternate interpretation of Pierce and Breach that allowed the damage from the weapon to shoot through and hurt for the pierce or breach ratings if the soak would absorb all the damage normally. Thus, a spy with a vibroknife with a decent roll that would only deal 5 damage to a soak 10 mandalorian would still deal 2 damage because the Pierce 2 ability lets him "Ignore 2 soak". This really balances out soak from making it too strong in my opinion, and it lets weaker people with the right gear still mess up people that consider themselves invincible. Death by a thousand cuts, as you just pile on 2 damage Critical Injuries over and over again.

...EotE truly captures how dangerous these weapons are supposed to be, while also making them very difficult to come by for most PCs. At a 10K base price and Rarity 10, you'd have an easier time buying a couple ships for that price.

I ran an entire adventure focused around the transportation of a rare artifact for a particular crime lord, one who had a deep appreciate for the "archaic and the forgotten trinkets of days passed." It didn't work, and was broken into two piece, but the weapon alone was worth a fortune to the right buyer. When they discovered what it was, four of the group wanted to pass it on and collect their payment; only one thought the risks inherent with owning such a weapon - and betraying a crime lord - was worth it.

The weapon is deadly, but most players are well-versed enough in the universe to know that, most of the time, they're just not worth the risk.

I know difficulty in melee is one purple dice and deemed to be easy, though to me it does say 'easy', which I take as the mean. So every now and then I throw in a red die so the players realise this opponent isn't 'easy'. Simplest way to modify a melee combat for that melee specialist who may be getting ahead of himself.

Then there are other ways as mentioned by others here.

Melee is an average difficulty (2 purple). Core Rulebook pg 204 "Assemble the Dice Pool"

Don't forget that certain bad guys have the Antagonist talent which upgrades the difficulty to hit them by an amount equal to their talent ranks. An extreme example of this would be the Black Sun Vigo on page 406 of the core book. He has Adversary 3 which means that the difficulty to hit him in Melee would be 1 Difficulty and 2 Challenge.

Obivously is not relevant when you are facing someone without Adversary (Minions or Pc's) but for the main fight it will make things a little more challenging.

E

Melee is an average difficulty (2 purple). Core Rulebook pg 204 "Assemble the Dice Pool"

Soz, I was reading from wrong table. Table 6-1 which is Ranged Attack Difficulty. Facepalm!!

Though my original comment stands. It was two purple dice with one upgraded to red as an indicator of better opponent. That's what I meant.

I was interested in creating custom talents for those melee heavy charactres. Like so, for example, someone wanted to be an extreme Wookiee Brawler or an Echani Martial Artist I'd probably try to create talents that upgrade the difficulty of oppponents rolls or provide defense, etc.

For the time being we have just been doing opposed rolls, and it has been working fine, but I really like to stay as much with RAW as we can so I wanted to hear everyone's thoughts.

In terms of lightsabers though, essentially why I was curious was because I really want those "epic" duels that we always see in star wars. Lightsabers clashing back and forth, for at least a couple rounds or more. With those that have experience with lightsabers duels do they last a bit or is it really until the first person hits and how long does that usually take around similiar skill?

With those that have experience with lightsabers duels do they last a bit or is it really until the first person hits and how long does that usually take around similiar skill?

I have no experience with lightsaber duels, but think about it: when you're fighting with lightsabers, whoever DOES land that first hit is pretty much guaranteed to win, especially if they take a limb. Lightsaber duels in pretty much every Star Wars confrontation go one way: the first person to get disarmed or hit loses unless the other person has a trick up their sleeve, or fate on their side.

Mind you, I don't think that anyone actually TRAINED to use a lightsaber and use it properly will just be a standard melee check to hit. If you're going up against some Emperor's Hands, they should feel appropriately difficult to kill in lightsaber duels.

I presume that when they come out with the book for Jedis (or perhaps even in the second book) they'll add rules to make lightsabers and melee a little more flexible. Until then, well, it's just after the purge: the only lightsabers in existence are either owned by Sith or in the hands of private collectors or exiles at this point.

I think I would run a light saber duel as a competitive check, where the duellists would make a regular attack each time they passed 5, 10, 15, 20 etc. successes. That would draw it out a bit more and perhaps better simulate a duel. DIfferent negative dice could be added to the pools from defense, light saber skill, force rating etc. But something along those lines.

Yeah, there was some discussion on the d20 Radio Forums about how to emulate the lighsaber duels we see in the films, started as GM Chris' players felt that the ligthsaber as it was written was simply too butch of a weapon to allow such a thing.

Thing to also remember is that most lightsaber duels we see are between Jedi, and odds are they've got the 'danger sense' upgrade from the Sense power with the Strength Upgrade, so any melee attacks against the Jedi would be at a base of 2 Challenge Dice before accounting for any defensive talents they might have.

I would imagine that when we do see the Jedi career/specs in Force & Destiny, there's going to be some defensive-based talents to help reflect a Jedi's skill in defending against another lightsaber.

If its brawl combat (fists to fists) i like to make it opposed checks, it takes longer but very dramatic!

Star Wars is a game of blasters and lightsabers when you are not piloting a ship. In most cases, once the lightsaber lands a blow, the fight is usually over one way or another. But in a game how do you balance that with the grand lightsaber duels? As DM mentioned, we will probably see more defensive talents once later books come out where lightsabers see more use. There's been a few ideas thrown around, such as using opposed rolls or that the breach quality gets dropped between Force-using lightsaber-wielding opponents. But it remains to be seen if the melee rules will be modified or if there will be talents and abilities added to flesh it out. One idea I had was either adding your Force Rating to your soak when combating a lightsaber-wielding opponent. Another was a talent that wpuld have you commit one Force die during the combat to nullify the Breach quality during the fight. I'll be interested to see how it is handled.

My friend's wookiee PC last night made the mistake of taking on Teemo the Hutt in hand to hand combat last night after Teemo had already drawn his blaster, the Hutt then called for an honour fight and the wookiee graciously handed Teemo a vibrio-axe, he was most surprised when Temmo turned out to be quite good with it. The two difficulty dice is just difficult enough to make the fight interesting but quite brutal.

The best bit about last night was watching the players face as he gradually found out some of the Hutts stats, he did think it was going to be a one hit fight, boy was he surprised.

Yeah, that was funny as hell (I'm another of the players in that group). But not as funny as when Teemo critted and broke the Wookiee's axe!

I think melee works pretty well as-is. It's easy to get hurt, but it's also easy to dish it out - so either avoiding combat, or getting the drop on the opposition, are both really good tactics. It's a bit like old school D&D that way.

A combat focused PC can actually take a lot of punishment, once they have decent armour. However, crits are dangerous if they accumulate, especially as taking damage above your wound threshold knocks you out and inflicts another crit.

There's also lots of ways to up your survivability:

- Our Wookiee has a high soak value, and normally takes stuff down before it can hurt him to much (just not this time...)

- I'm playing a human bounty hunter (assassin spec). I've spent my accumulated XP on getting both Dodge talents, so for 2 strain I can upgrade the difficulty of any incoming attack by 2. This is nearly always worth it, but I don't want to get mobbed. so I let the Wookiee go in first.

- Our Rodian Thief stays out of melee combat and snipes. This is relatively easy to do when there is an angry Wookiee in the room drawing all the fire.

I think that lightsabers are another issue entirely, and agree that defensive talents are they way to go. Basically, it's all fun and games - and then someone loses a hand.

The Jedi game really needs to be able to easily and reliably generate satisfying lightsaber duels, even for players whose first experience of the edge of the empire system is when they sit down to play a Jedi in Force & Destiny.*

Honestly not got a lot of confidence that it will.

*As in, in two years or so time, a lot of Force and Destiny GMs who haven't played EotE or AoR are going to have to explain the rules to a table of players who haven't played before, and then immediately run an encounter between high level characters who are all armed with lightsabers. Not gonna be pretty.

Luckily for you and all those noob GMs there will be a plethora of Star Wars GMs who, having played the game from the get-go, will be able to advise and help them grasp the rules and mechanics of the system. We are such a friendly community always trying to help our fellow gamers.

Attacking Vader with a lightsaber:
Adversary 4. Sense power 2 defense upgrades. Heavy Battle armor. Defensive maneuvering probably all of the time, since his stance is one that is very Shien in appearance. Heavy defence, heavier hits. Use a Destiny point basically all day every day because he's goddamn Darth Vader. We will also assume that, since the Forsaken Jedi can magically get Defensive and Deflecting on his lightsaber as a trained Jedi F&D will have an ability that restores those abilities, giving him Defensive 2.

Difficulty to attack him is RRRRPbbbb.

Assuming Luke has enough Defensive Stance upgrades to do approximately the same (maybe without the extra 1 defense from his armor), even if they both had 5 skill in lightsaber and 5 in Brawn/Agility respectively, and using the 2 sense offensive upgrade, they would be rolling:

YYYYYY with an extra b from defensive maneuvering to further complicate things.

Without any other modifiers, I rolled this with a dice roller many times. I'd say 50% were successes and 50% were failures. There were almost always a LOT of advantages/threats/triumphs/despairs in every case, though. Sometimes with the opposite type to the positive or negative outcome. With the narrative system in place with this, you must also remember that one roll doesn't mean one swing. It can be a minute of clashing back and forth. But then, if you rolled a success, you manage to cut through and hit him. Otherwise, he blocks, and disarms you because you rolled a bunch of threat. Or, you back him to the edge of a carbonite chamber. There's so much here that, unless you aren't prepared for a lightsaber fight with another force user, you don't have to worry about the combat system denying you a great conflict. I think the combat system can handle a prolonged epic confrontation just fine.

There's also lots of ways to up your survivability:

- Our Wookiee has a high soak value, and normally takes stuff down before it can hurt him to much (just not this time...)

- I'm playing a human bounty hunter (assassin spec). I've spent my accumulated XP on getting both Dodge talents, so for 2 strain I can upgrade the difficulty of any incoming attack by 2. This is nearly always worth it, but I don't want to get mobbed. so I let the Wookiee go in first.

- Our Rodian Thief stays out of melee combat and snipes. This is relatively easy to do when there is an angry Wookiee in the room drawing all the fire.

I think that lightsabers are another issue entirely, and agree that defensive talents are they way to go. Basically, it's all fun and games - and then someone loses a hand.

Just remember those tactics won't work all the time......cue evil GM laugh.......mwuhahha